Hospitals in pursuit of excellence

Reducing a Bottleneck

Timely access to health care is important for everyone, particularly our nation's veterans. From 2006?2009, the Birmingham (Ala.) Veterans Affairs Medical Center saw a 72 percent increase in the number of patient visits per year, which resulted in long delays for services. The outpatient neurology clinic had the longest waiting time for appointments. To improve patient throughput, an interprofessional team designed a new patient consult process from order entry to appointment date. After reviewing all computerized entry new patient consults, the team found about 25 percent were entered incorrectly?for example, for the wrong clinic. A new consult order form was developed in the computerized patient record system. After five months and 858 new consults, incorrectly entered consults decreased 62 percent. The number of patients not seen within 14 days decreased 91 percent. "Next steps include continued monitoring for sustainability and analyzing other ways to meet increasing demand," says neurologist Victor W. Sung, M.D. Contact him at vsung@uabmc.edu.